This book explores the nature of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), a set of abilities required to promote sojourner engagement with diversity during study abroad and other educational exchange experiences. A highly original contribution to the intercultural communication literature, this book bases its multinational perspective of ICC on an extensive literary search in six languages and spanning 50 years to identify ICC’s multiple components, to develop a comprehensive assessment tool, and to assess its development and impact on exchange participants in multiple countries.

Providing an overview of how online technology is being used for foreign language learning, this title assesses three different models of telecollaboration and covers theoretical approaches to online intercultural exchange as well as practical aspects.

This volume examines the complex role of international education exchange in promoting peace and intercultural understanding. The perception that international education encourages greater understanding and cooperation between, people, cultures, and nations continues to drive participation and resources to this growing sector. With thought-provoking theoretical discussions and a broad range of case studies, this volume provides a much needed critical exploration of the ways in which international education exchanges may impact individuals as well as broader issues of global peace and development.

It is now widely recognised that learning a language should not just involve linguistic competence but also intercultural competence. It is also clear that intercultural competence can be developed through related subjects such as geography, history, mother tongue teaching. This book takes this as a given and provides practical help for teachers who wish to help their learners acquire intercultural competence in the ordinary classroom. It contains descriptions of lessons and materials from a wide range of classrooms in several countries and for beginners to advanced learners.

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 1,3, University of Hannover, course: Intercultural Learning in the English Language Classroom, language: English, abstract: This term paper will analyse a student exchange to England, carried out by a grammar school in Stolzenau, as an encounter program promoting Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC). First, it will present the development of ICC as one main goal of the contemporary Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) and will define the intercultural speaker as its ideal. Furthermore it will give a short overview on the targeted knowledge, skills, attitudes and educational aims behind this concept, and will introduce school exchanges as one mean to facilitate the development of ICC. The ensuing paragraphs will deal with principles of the design of encounters. They will present important factors, prerequisites and practical options for organizing exchanges. These principles will lay the foundation of an evaluation of the Stolzenau exchange to Cullingworth trying to establish a connection between theory and practice.

This volume provides a state of the art overview of Online Intercultural Exchange (OIE) in university education and demonstrates how educators can use OIE to address current challenges in university contexts such as internationalisation, virtual mobility and intercultural foreign language education. Since the 1990s, educators have been using virtual interaction to bring their classes into contact with geographically distant partner classes to create opportunities for authentic communication, meaningful collaboration and first-hand experience of working and learning with partners from other cultural backgrounds. Online exchange projects of this nature can contribute to the development of learner autonomy, linguistic accuracy, intercultural awareness, intercultural skills and electronic literacies. Online Intercultural Exchange has now reached a stage where it is moving beyond individual classroom initiatives and is assuming a role as a major tool for internationalization, intercultural development and virtual mobility in universities around the globe. This volume reports qualitative and quantitative findings on the impact of OIE on universities in Europe and elsewhere and offers comprehensive guidance on using OIE at both pedagogical and technological levels. It provides theoretically-informed accounts of Online Intercultural Exchanges which will relevant to researchers in Computer Assisted Language Learning, Computer-Mediated Communication, or Virtual Education. Finally, contributors offer a collection of practitioner-authored and practically-oriented case studies for the benefit of teachers of foreign languages or in other subject areas who wish to engage in developing the digital literacy and intercultural competences of their learners.

The research and development described in this volume is intended to contribute to the integration of intercultural communication training in teacher education programmes.

This volume provides a strong theoretical introduction to the field of intercultural communication, offering practical examples of classroom activities, as well as presenting empirical research which demonstrates that intercultural communicative competence (ICC) can be developed effectively in specially tailored courses adjusted to the needs of learners. It presents a novel model of intercultural sensitivity assessment, and outlines the results of research into intercultural communicative competence conducted among the students of English Language Studies in state colleges in Poland. The cultural component in developing ICC as an extra-linguistic determinant is assigned particular prominence in the book. A thorough analysis of the empirical material collected from participant observation, the administered questionnaires and interviews allowed the most common values and attitudes held as components of intercultural sensitivity to be identified. The obtained findings are subsequently analyzed to predict the potential areas of communication misunderstandings and failures between Polish learners of English and representatives of other cultures.

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: 1,7, LMU Munich, 20 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This raises the question why culture should be of such an importance for language learners anyway? First of all you have to consider that "language learning cannot be separated from culture learning as language manifests many of the social actions of a society and expresses the values and beliefs which underlie these actions"(O'Dowd 2006:62). Cultural Studies has not only found its way into MFL teaching but has become an important part of Intercultural Understanding. The central aim of Cultural Studies is therefore" [...] to understand [...] a particular culture and society and [...] to learn to understand cultures in general. At the same time, it is intended that the process of understanding a culture which differs from one's own should also lead to a better understanding of one's own culture as learners compare the home and target culture and reflect on their own" (Kramer 2000:42).

This work builds on the assumption that language learning and teaching needs to be made more relevant to the 'glocalised' digital world we live in. Its authors argue that staff in Higher Education (HE) must prepare students for effective online interaction and explores the digital, linguistic and critical intercultural components of ‘global citizenship’. The book pivots around an innovative research study; linguistic politeness frameworks are revisited to analyse the written online exchanges on an Online International Learning (OIL) - or intercultural telecollaborative - project between the UK and France.Through the use of cyberpragmatics, and inspired by Meyer and Land’s ‘threshold concept pedagogy’, the authors examine the challenges and solutions identified by an ‘expert student’ in managing rules of engagement and intercultural awareness when interacting online. This book will appeal to students and scholars of applied linguistics, education, sociolinguistics and intercultural communication, and provide a valuable resource for teacher trainers, language teachers and educators across the world.